Social Theory: Collective Memory

Bin XuAssistant Professor of Sociology and Asian

StudiesFlorida International University

Barry Schwartz and the Cultural System Theory of Collective Memory

• Politics of Memory versus Cultural System

• Empirical Cases

• Reception of Collective Memory

• Post-heroic Era

Politics of memory versus Cultural System

• Critiques of the politics of memory approach: only causes and consequences

• The past as a model of and a model for the society:

1. Model of: reflecting the present2. Model for: a template and a frame (Memory

as a social framecompared to Halbwachs’s “social frameworks of memory”)

3. Why some models but not others?

Exemplary Case: Lincoln in WWII

• Functions of collective memory:1. Legitimation2. Orientation3. Clarification 4. Inspiration5. Consolation

Problems with the Cultural System Approach• The whole theory is based on the

assumption of a homogeneous moral order based on a set of shared moral virtues.

• The past is already a “sacred past”

The Post-Heroic Era

• The five Lincolns (p.116)1. Savior of the Union2. The great emancipator3. Man of the people4. The first American5. The self-made man

The Post-Heroic Era

The Post-Heroic Era

The Post-Heroic Era

The Post-Heroic EraDeclining reputation: racist or emancipator? Benign Ridicule

Benign Ridicule

Post-Heroic Era

• “No feeling of having descended from a higher state of political morality, no nostalgic yearning for a sublime period in which great men walked the earth, no belief in, let alone effort to restore, earlier periods of epic heroism defines it. In this generation the very notion of greatness has eroded.” (p.187)

Post-Heroic Era

• Fading of great men/greatness• Respecting individuals, diversity, victimhood,

etc.• Lincoln’s decline is part of a larger cultural

pattern that involves: 1. New openness and acceptance of all peoples,

regardless of social characteristics2. Deterioration and coarsening of traditional

symbols and practices (p.190)

Questions

• Is Barry Schwartz nostalgic?• “Acid of equality?”• Do we need a great man today?